Making life uncomfortable for bad guys will make the Rockford region much safer. There's no doubt about that, and while we hailed the creation of a Violent Crime Task Force to go after the worst of the worst, we also hope to see specific public goals for the unit.

Winnebago County, Rockford, the Illinois State Police and Loves Park are teaming up to contribute full-time detectives to an investigative arm of the task force focused primarily on gangsters, career criminals and active shooters.

We are confident that the unit will succeed, but we'd like to see numbers to support our confidence. The public deserves no less.

Bruscato is right that much of public safety is perception. Having hard numbers sure helps change or reinforce the perception of a safe community. Yes, sometimes the numbers don't tell the real story, but they can tell us whether this approach is working or needs a few adjustments,

It can't be just about "more arrests" and putting more bad guys behind bars. That probably will happen in an aggressive, comprehensive cooperative approach to crime-fighting.

That's probable with the assembled team, led by Deputy Sheriff Dominic Iasparro. However, Iasparro's no-nonsense, old-school style needs to blend with modern metrics so we can grade the team appropriately.

"There's less shootings taking place today than there were two months ago because of some of these people that were taken off the streets," he said.

That's great, but let's quantify it.

While overall crime in Rockford is down, from nearly 14,000 incidents in 1998 to just under 10,000 in 2012, violent crime is up, from nearly 1,500 incidents in 1998 to about 2,000 in 2012.

How about publicly setting a goal of reducing violent crime by X percent? And then following up with regular progress reports to the community?

We're not scaling back our enthusiasm about having these agencies work together. It's a good concept and a good plan. It happened thanks to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos intervening in May and conducting a public safety meeting with city, county and federal law enforcement officials to hear about the violent crime facing Rockford and how law enforcement is responding.

"Since that meeting, these officials have worked hard to formulate a plan that enhances information-sharing and coordination between agencies, and I am pleased to see such a plan put in place today," Durbin said in a statement. "I applaud everyone involved for their ongoing efforts to keep families and communities in Winnebago County safe."

Page 2 of 2 - Bustos said the "regional collaboration will help make Rockford and Winnebago County communities safer for children and families, and better places to live and work, by enhancing partnerships between city, county and federal law enforcement agencies."

Rockford does a good job of tracking crime statistics with Compstat, but there's no mechanism in place for the Violent Task Force. There should be. Next time we write about this task force, we'd like to have some facts to show how successful it's been.